


Supplications of Wood Reaching Upwards

by Saku777



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: F/M, Historical Hetalia, Lietbela hints
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-15
Updated: 2018-02-15
Packaged: 2019-03-18 23:05:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13691721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saku777/pseuds/Saku777
Summary: After returning from a deportation to Siberia in the early 1950's Lithuania goes to the Hill of Crosses and reflects on his culture, people, faith, what it means to him and his determination to stay true to it and what he truly is despite everything. Meanwhile a certain someone observes him from a distance and keeps this in her heart. This is a Valentine's day gift to Atomically





	Supplications of Wood Reaching Upwards

**Author's Note:**

  * For [atomically](https://archiveofourown.org/users/atomically/gifts).



It had been a few years since he had been here last, so much had happened since then, so much had been lost. Yet, despite all that, despite all that death and suffering and bloodshed he was still here. Lithuania looked around at the land surrounding him, the land that filled him and was him. It was winter and grey-brown trees with their skeletal hands reaching upwards and outward, almost as if they were clawing out to reach and touch him, to find out if he was really there, really real, really alive, filled the area. The wind whistled and wailed though their empty branches and it reminded him almost of voices,perhaps of beings that lived within the forest itself, or perhaps of the dead that still haunted his mind and flowed though his veins. Death was all around him, outside and inside. Yet death was a renewal as well, and after winter always came spring. So too like his faith told him as well, after death always came life. That was one of the many things that kept him going, that kept his heart beating and his hope alive.

Dried leaves littered the ground, yet as he walked though the forest he made no sound, almost blending into it. Despite that, a pair of blue eyes, blue like the flax flowers that dotted the grass, watched him warily and carefully making no sound while doing so. Lithuania himself was unaware of this viewer, he was far too wrapped up in his own thoughts, far too wrapped up in the feeling of being back in his own lands, his own body, after spending so long in Russia and in the east. It was so bitterly cold there, it almost felt as if the frost had not left his bones, but here? Here despite all the death he felt a feeling of warmth and of life filling his heart and spirit. Lithuania would be green again and if he had to he would fight and die over and over again to prove it. 

His body did not look like much. It was thin and almost emaciated looking with pale skin and grey bags under those deep green eyes. He looked like one exhausted and starved. Yet, and Belarus knew it as she watched him and it almost disquieted her, there was a fire and a life force within eyes that refused to go out, as green and as lively as the evergreen pines. Finally he reached his destination and at the sight of it his heart sung and he smiled a tired little smile. It made her shiver.

There right in front of him was a large hill filled with masses and masses of crosses, he knew that Russia had tried time and time again to destroy it,to tear it all down and leave nothing there, much like the authorities tired to tear down his faith in God and Catholicism, yet there it still was. It was slightly smaller than before, and some of the crosses he had seen there last were no longer there, but there was new ones to replace them. The wooden and metal crosses reached up to the sky, as if their suffering makers were building them in order to reach up and embrace their suffering God with their very own bloodied hands. As if they too wanted to join their tears and prayers physically and so weep along side with God at all the brutality they had endured.

He continued to feel that fire in his heart and he uttered a quick prayer before crossing himself and taking out a small cross he had hidden in his coat pocket. He remembered finding the stray piece of wood in Siberia. The day he found it he thought of tossing it away or making a fire of it, but in a sudden spark of inspiration he decided in the end to save it. So he did so and in the spare spare times he had he pulled it out and carved it carefully with a small knife he had, taking comfort it carving down the wood and making the instrument of torture his God had suffered on, meditating on God’s emancipated and tortured body as he shaped it into being. God himself knew what he would endue and understood and suffered alongside with him. He too had dealt with beatings and death and pain, he too understood, and that was a great comfort to him. Oh to have a God that understood pain and sorrow so intimately, it was a great gift, one he did not regret in the end. Despite his stubbornness in accepting this faith init ally now it was his, his, his his! His totally and his inimitably and Russia would never be able to take it form him. 

He didn’t bother looking around as he walked to the hill. At that moment he didn’t care if Russia saw him, or if a spy did so, or if anyone did. Let them see, let them talk. He would stare right in Russia’s eyes and tell him what he had done if confronted, however if no one did see he was no fool, he would not talk in that case. It was simply that he refused to be ashamed of himself and what was so important to his people. 

Finally he reached the center of the crosses, all bare jutting wood and grey glum metal and placed his own cross amidst all the others. He would return again and again in the future for decades with more crosses along side his people. He would return even after it was all over and he was free from Russia’s grasp to pray and to place more crosses and to remember what had happened and to remember his people. However no he had know knowledge of the future, just a glimmering hope inside his chest that caused him to place the cross there alongside all the others, it was the hope that remained inside his people’s hearts as well.

Meanwhile as all this transpired Belarus continued to watch him. She would not tell Russia despite her growing love for him that she left was consuming her soul and spirit and body, for she too had faith. She was Orthodox and not Catholic, but despite that she felt a secret solidarity in this moment that she half disliked for she too believed in God and knew of his suffering. She did not make it open, she did not say it, she pretended she was an atheist and pretended to her brother’s face so as not to anger him or endanger either of them. However deep in the secret of her heart and soul buried deep deep within was her faith and no one could take it from her, at least not yet. She felt the continued prayers and whispers of her peasant folk as they kept to their Orthodox faith in secret and in the darkness of the night, and so she did so too. She kept it in the dark from everyone, from Lithuania as well and so too she would keep this vision of him in the dark. Years later once she was her own nation she would still keep it secret in her heart and she would tell no one, not even him. She watched him as he stood up from praying, turning around to enter the woods once more and with that, she quickly left, making sure he did not see her or know that anyone had been present.

**Author's Note:**

> The Hill of Crosses is a Lithuanian site where crosses and catholic statutes have been left since the early 1900's. It quickly became a symbol of both Lithuanian Catholicism and identity and it's persistence and strength of endurance despite all the efforts to snuff both out. It become especially significant during the Soviet Union and people continued to go there and leave crosses despite efforts to destroy it and was a place of resistance.  
> Between 1945 and 1952 there was a series of mass deportations from Lithuania to Sibera. Many died during this time and after Stalin's death in 1953 some of those that remained gradually returned to Lithuania. These included former partisans, political prisoners, kulaks, and intellectuals and their families.  
> Despite being pagan for a long while and initial resistance to Christianity Catholicism came to play an important part in Lithuanian identity and history and was an important factor in resistance against the Soviet Union and the erosion of the Lithuanian identity during that time.


End file.
